09.15.17

This week in Paris all seemed calm, after the turbulence of the last few years, with the only major announcement coming from SES with its new O3b mPower MEO constellation. But under the surface a lot is happening, and (perhaps appropriately) I think we are now just in the eye of the hurricane, and the storm will shortly ramp up once again, before we find out who and what will be left standing in a couple of years time.

SES’s announcement came several months after it selected Boeing to build the O3b NEXT constellation (the “development agreement” was announced in July as part of SES’s half year results) and the delay until now appears to have been due to SES waiting for an anchor tenant that never materialized. In fact I believe SES originally expected to announce the contract in May, as was hinted at when SES’s CEO said he was “too busy” to go to Satellite 2017). However, SES is clearly not willing to see OneWeb, ViaSat and Inmarsat take the lead in new data-oriented satellite systems, whether or not it secures a major anchor tenant for this system.

Another subject of much debate is what Panasonic will decide to do now its original plan to invest in dedicated XTS satellites appears to be dead. Panasonic wants to lay off much more of the risk on a satellite operator, rather than underwriting the satellite costs in full, as Thales did with SES-17. Will an FSS operator be prepared to take this risk, bearing in mind that Intelsat is short of money, SES is now building O3b NEXT (which won’t be well suited for high latitude aero operations) and Eutelsat is intending to partner with ViaSat? Or would Panasonic do something more radical and let a rival like Inmarsat take over provision of connectivity services?

Finally, Inmarsat seems to be under a lot of pressure after a 15% decline in its share price in the last two weeks, and some were speculating that recent personnel changes were connected to this uncertain outlook. Profitability of aero contracts (notably that with Lufthansa) remains a major concern, and issues remain to be resolved for the EAN air-to-ground network, especially if Inmarsat is forced to provide a more robust satellite link in the wake of ViaSat’s legal challenge.

All of these issues provide much food for thought, and could lead to significant realignments in the industry over the next year. Decisions affecting the inflight connectivity market are almost certain to occur, because Panasonic can’t wait too long to provide clarity on its future positioning, and so we had better batten down the hatches for the coming winds of change.

05.14.17

Back in June 2016 there was considerably excitement around ViaSat’s sole source $73M contract to provide connectivity for Air Force One and other senior leadership aircraft. The plan was to replace Boeing’s Ku-band BBSN (which has continued to operate ever since the commercial Connnexion-by-Boeing project was cancelled in 2006) with a dual Ka/Ku-band solution which could utilize the ViaSat Ka-band satellites within their coverage footprint and then switch back to Ku-band in other parts of the world.

I’m told that one reason this upgrade happened was that President Obama’s daughters complained that the connectivity on Air Force One compared unfavorably to the speeds available on other ViaSat-equipped aircraft they had flown on, and ViaSat ultimately received a sole source contract, with the US government purchasing a couple of dozen of ViaSat’s dual Ku/Ka antennas in addition to the airtime contract.

But I’ve heard rumors that the RF performance of this Ku/Ka antenna failed the WGS compatibility tests required by the Air Force, and so to date the US government has not installed these new terminals, and Air Force One is apparently still operating with the old Boeing system. Its unclear what the end result will be, or if this is an easily solvable problem, but ViaSat’s competitors (especially Inmarsat, which has successfully leased GX capacity to the DoD for manned surveillance missions in the Middle East) are now rubbing their hands with glee.

[UPDATE 5/15] A spokesperson for ViaSat states that this rumor “is inaccurate. ViaSat is on target with our testing and deliverables, per our DISA contract.”

The broader prospects for ViaSat’s Ku/Ka antenna also appear uncertain, with the only commercial customer to date being Virgin America, which is using a handful of terminals on its Hawaii routes. Virgin America’s new owner, Alaska Airlines, has announced its intention to replace its existing Gogo ATG solution with a high speed satellite solution, but some now think that Gogo’s recent lease of the AMC-4 satellite for Pacific coverage means it will win this business with 2Ku.

Its interesting to note that Gilat has also developed a Ku/Ka antenna, which Hughes will offer for roaming outside its own Ka-band coverage footprint. Will this antenna be better than ViaSat’s solution, and more broadly will a combined Ku and Ka antenna (which inevitably has a smaller aperture and more beam skew problems) be a realistic alternative to high performance flat panels like Gogo’s 2Ku? The answer to that question will dictate whether ViaSat and Hughes can provide competition in the long haul passenger aircraft market over the next few years, or whether Panasonic, Gogo and Inmarsat will continue to dominate that segment until all three ViaSat-3 satellites are launched in the early 2020s, by which time most airlines will already have made their choice of provider.

02.17.17

As we get closer to Satellite 2017, where major new deals and partnerships are often announced, it looks like a number of players may be getting cold feet about their future satellite plans. This may be partly attributable to fears that OneWeb will contribute to a eventual glut of capacity, now it has secured SoftBank as a lead investor and raised another $1.2B. Even though capacity pricing may have stabilized somewhat for now, its certainly the case that a satellite ordered now is likely to enter the market at a point when pricing is set to decline much further.

We’ve already seen a delay in Panasonic’s XTS satellite order, which was supposed to happen before the end of 2016. Ironically enough, Leo Mondale of Inmarsat said at the Capital Markets Day last October that he believed “Panasonic in Yokohama are a little wary of getting into the satellite business” and in the wake of the recent FCPA probe, Panasonic Avionics now has a new Japanese CEO.

Moreover, one way of viewing the recent announcement that Eutelsat will take its ViaSat JV forward (and include aero mobility, which was not part of the original agreement) is that Eutelsat no longer believes it will strike a deal to operate Panasonic’s XTS satellites. That’s a much better explanation than bizarre speculation that ViaSat is going to buy Eutelsat, especially when ViaSat is still struggling to fund its third satellite for Asia and is openly hinting that it will need US government contracts to close the business case. Eutelsat also seems to be cutting back elsewhere, with some speculation that the Ka-band broadband satellite previously ordered for Africa may now be repurposed for other (non-broadband) applications.

But the biggest news appears to be a pull back on SES’s part from the long rumored global Ka-band GEO system that I noted last summer. SES announced only a single satellite (SES-17) for the Americas in partnership with Thales last September, but had plans for two additional satellites, and it seemed increasingly likely that a partnership with EchoStar would be announced soon to fund this development. Now it seems that effort is on hold, leaving EchoStar without an obvious way forward to achieving global coverage (as it seems EchoStar considered but rejected the idea of buying Inmarsat last fall).

There are also other more speculative projects that need to show some progress to remain credible. When it was disclosed by the WSJ last month, SpaceX’s business plan for its satellite internet service was widely dismissed as laughably unrealistic. However, I believe that in fact this is not the business plan that corresponds to the current system design, and instead SpaceX will be seeking a large amount of US government money to fund its constellation. Compared to SpaceX and OneWeb, Telesat’s constellation ambitions have largely been ignored by commentators, despite Telesat’s priority claim to the Ka-band NGSO spectrum band. So Telesat therefore also faces pressure to secure external investors in the near term so that it can keep pace with OneWeb.

Now the question is whether caution amongst major existing players will make it harder for new entrants to move forward. Will it signal to investors that they should be cautious about investing in any satellite businesses? Or will it be perceived that new opportunities will face less competition from existing operators? The NewSpace community certainly seems to still be living in a bubble, despite the deeply negative implications of Google’s decision to abandon its efforts in satellite and hand over Terra Bella to Planet (not least because a sale to Google or other internet companies was seen as the most plausible exit for VC investors). So I look forward to seeing how much reality intrudes on the discussions at Satellite 2017.

11.09.16

Yesterday was an eventful day, not only for the US as a whole, but also for the inflight connectivity sector when both ViaSat and GEE announced their quarterly results at the same time. We’ve all been waiting for Southwest Airlines to make a decision about their future connectivity choices, so when ViaSat announced that “Subsequent to the end of the second quarter of fiscal year 2017 (i.e. since September 30), ViaSat was selected by a North American airline to retrofit more than 500 aircraft from its existing, mainline domestic fleet with ViaSat’s highly advanced in-flight internet system” it was natural to assume that this was Southwest.

However, GEE has now denied that the ViaSat’s new customer is Southwest and when asked about the progress of the Southwest RFP on their results call, GEE stated that investors should “stay tuned” for an announcement but that GEE “expect[s] to continue to enhance the product and services that we provide at Southwest. And our expectation that we will remain a major customer of our connectivity business well beyond the current commitments.”

What this doesn’t say is that GEE is likely to retain anything like its current business with Southwest, indeed this statement is eerily reminiscent of Gogo’s assertion in February that it hoped to “retain a strong and lasting relationship” with American, when American ultimately split its orders between Gogo and ViaSat. And a conclusion to the Southwest competition appears imminent, with either Panasonic or ViaSat expected to capture a major share of Southwest’s fleet. Panasonic certainly think they are still in the game, but others (not just ViaSat itself) appear to believe ViaSat is now in the lead on the back of aggressive terminal pricing.

So what did ViaSat actually announce? Most have assumed that if it wasn’t Southwest, it must be the outstanding mainline aircraft at American Airlines, which American has the option to move away from Gogo’s ATG service. But those orders were expected to be decided in two separate batches and not necessarily in the immediate future, since American has still not even received the first installations for either of the existing contracts with Gogo 2Ku and ViaSat.

UPDATE: So its a big surprise that American has now confirmed that it will be moving essentially all of its mainline fleet to ViaSat (other than the pending 2Ku installations). I had wondered if the order might instead be for upgrades at United (where ViaSat already serves 360 planes) combined with United’s rumored pending order for 100-120 new planes. And that might very well still be another win for ViaSat in the next month or two.

FURTHER UPDATE: Back in late May, Gogo signed a term sheet with American Airlines which specified that its “terms will form the basis for transition to a new unified agreement to be negotiated in an effort to sign no later than October 1st, 2016.” Curiously, Gogo’s Q3 10-Q filed on November 3, makes no mention of a new agreement being signed with American Airlines either before or after the end of the quarter, which raises the question of exactly what is the status of this relationship right now, and whether the companies were unable to finalize the agreement because American decided to move the remaining mainline aircraft off Gogo’s ATG network without making any further commitment to 2Ku. However, we may not get much clarity on this issue for some time, perhaps not until Gogo’s Q4 report at the end of February.

Sorry I jumped the gun on Southwest, but things still look bad for GEE, and may in fact be even better for ViaSat than I expected if they win both American and much of Southwest’s fleet, not to mention another possible win for 100+ new planes and 360 upgrades at United.

In the meantime, we face more intrigue with respect to SmartSky and Gogo’s unlicensed ATG plans, with Microsoft filing with the FCC for tests to “develop channel models for air-to-ground operations in the 2.4 GHz ISM band” and to “examine various techniques that might minimize the potential for the air-to-ground link to disrupt Wi-Fi communications on the ground in the area surrounding the ground station.”

After Microsoft tested Globalstar’s proposed TLPS solution (which incidentally may have been administered the coup de grace by Trump’s win last night) and claimed a “profound negative impact,” it would not be in the least surprising if they now propose that the FCC should commence a rulemaking on where these ATG ground stations should be located (presumably not in the vicinity of Xboxes!), similar to the work on LTE-U (which also complies with existing FCC rules for unlicensed spectrum).

While those rules would not necessarily prevent deployment (ATG ground stations would simply be located in rural areas away from other buildings), any rulemaking could result in delays of 1-2 years before the network can be deployed. The consequence of that would potentially be to accelerate the migration of mainline commercial aircraft away from ATG and towards satellite solutions, in order to free up more capacity on Gogo’s network for smaller aircraft and business jets.

Overall, my concerns about continued ruinous competition in the inflight connectivity market have now been amplified further. Inmarsat has achieved key wins with Norwegian and IAG, which have put it firmly back in the game. ViaSat continues to grow its market share and now GEE’s refocusing on China and new investment from ShareCo could allow it to continue to compete in some international markets as well. Thales may be able to take JetBlue away from ViaSat (as Inmarsat suggested at its Capital Markets Day last month) and move these aircraft onto AMC-15/16 and ultimately SES-17. And Gogo and Panasonic still have a massive backlog of orders to work through. So despite all the talk of potential consolidation, it looks like airlines (and hopefully passengers) will continue to benefit from terminal subsidies, lower wholesale session costs and increasing bandwidth for some time to come.

11.02.16

Earlier this year I warned that the satellite industry seemed to be stepping off the precipice, as a Ku HTS price war culminated in the very attractive pricing (of around $1000 per MHz per month) that Gogo and Panasonic secured from SES in February 2016. What has followed over the last six months or so has been rampant negativity in the press about overcapacity and price crashes. Even NSR, who in March were noting the “generally slow and stable downward pressure on pricing up to 2016″ are now asserting that “satellite capacity pricing [is] in a prolonged freefall for most applications.”

In reality, the last six months have seen the first signs of stabilization in satellite capacity pricing, as SES and Intelsat pull back somewhat from their price war which was the proximate cause of the dramatic price declines seen from late 2014 through early 2016. In particular, SES predicted a “strong growth outlook” at its June investor day and presented a slide at the GCA Summit earlier that month showing three Ka-band HTS GEO satellites for global coverage. One of the ways SES was expected to deliver on this strategy was by “focusing on value-added, end-to-end solutions” in each of its verticals.

Its therefore interesting to see the contrast between Gogo’s assertion at its investor day on September 29 that there will be an “ample and diverse supply” of Ku-band capacity (totaling nearly 1Tbps globally by 2019) with Inmarsat’s position a week later that “Ku-band supply could be limited,” especially in North America.

At this point in time, it looks like the “unexpected softness” of satellite orders in 2016, caused by fears about a price crash will mean very few new C- or Ku-band GEO satellites being ordered in the near future without an anchor tenant. Panasonic may well follow Thales’ lead with its XTS satellites, but that won’t result in any (let alone “ample”) incremental supply for Gogo. And Gogo is not in a position to order a dedicated Ku-band satellite of its own to provide more capacity on top of its existing commitments.

Operators may well be justified in fearing dramatic erosion in pricing from new Ka-band satellites with hundreds of Gbps of capacity, but outside North America, there simply won’t be any of that capacity available before 2020. As a result, stabilization of pricing (albeit at considerably lower levels than those in historic contracts, many of which still need to be rolled over) seems plausible for 2017-18.

Instead I’m much more worried about whether substantial growth in revenue really will be stimulated by these lower prices. TIM Brazil (which is one of Intelsat’s biggest customers for cellular backhaul) is a good example, with their move to Epic Ku-band capacity giving them three times the capacity (partly from improved bps/Hz efficiency) compared to their previous C-band solution, with no increase in spending. And at least part of the fall in enterprise revenues seen by Intelsat and SES in the last two years appears to be due to less bandwidth being used by these customers, rather than simply price declines on existing (let alone incremental) capacity.

Some of that reduction in capacity utilization may be due to more efficient modems, which could be a one-off effect, but I believe that the question of demand elasticity (in the face of competition from terrestrial alternatives) is going to be much more important challenge for the satellite market in 2017 and 2018 than a supposed “freefall” in bandwidth prices. If satellite operators can identify untapped opportunities where they can be competitive with terrestrial, as O3b has done in various Pacific islands, or where there is substantial demand elasticity as passengers create on commercial airplanes and cruise ships, then revenue growth will result.

But if spend is relatively inelastic, as seems plausible for many enterprise VSAT (and perhaps some government) customers, then terrestrial competition may lead to continued market erosion. The biggest wild card is cellular backhaul: huge amounts of capacity are needed as mobile operators move from 2G to 3G to 4G in developing countries, so if these terrestrial players commit to satellite, there could be substantial revenue upside. On the other hand, if mobile operators focus on microwave as their backhaul solution of choice in Africa and Asia, it will be much more difficult to achieve significant growth in the satellite business.

However, even that reduced target may require extra spectrum to achieve, with ViaSat asking the FCC in late May for permission to use 600MHz of additional spectrum in the LMDS band. Fundamentally this appears to be due to the reduced efficiency that ViaSat now expects to achieve relative to that set out in its original beamhopping patent. The patent suggested that for a ViaSat-2 design (with only 1.5GHz of spectrum, rather than the 2.1GHz ViaSat now intends to use), the efficiency could be as high as 3bps/Hz on the forward link (i.e. 225Gbps) and 1.8bps/Hz on the return link (i.e. 135Gbps) for a total of 360Gbps of capacity. But at Satellite 2016, ViaSat’s CEO indicated that an efficiency (apparently averaged between the forward and return links) of only 1.5bps/Hz should be expected, no better than existing HTS Ka-band satellites and nearly 40% lower than ViaSat originally estimated.

A notable side-effect of this additional spectrum utilization (even assuming approval is granted by the FCC) is that new terminals will be required, including replacement of both the antenna and the modem for aircraft that want to make use of the extended coverage of ViaSat-2. That’s why American Airlines is waiting until the second half of 2017 for this new terminal to be developed, before it starts to install ViaSat’s connectivity on new aircraft.

While the FCC’s Spectrum Frontiers Order yesterday does contemplate continued use of the LMDS band for satellite gateways (though utilization by user terminals appears more difficult), it looks like other Ka-band providers intend to shift more of their future gateway operations up to the Q/V-band, rather than building hundreds of Ka-band gateways as ViaSat will need for its ViaSat-3 satellite. That decision could reduce the costs of competing ground segment deployments substantially, while retaining continuity for user links. Thus, as a result of the lower than expected beamhopping efficiency, it remains to be seen whether ViaSat’s technology will now be meaningfully superior to that of competitors, notably SES and Inmarsat who both appear poised to invest heavily in Ka-band.

SES gave a presentation at the Global Connected Aircraft Summit last month, depicting its plans to build three new Ka-band HTS satellites for global coverage as shown above, and the first of these satellites could be ordered very shortly, because as SES pointed out in its recent Investor Day presentation, it has EUR120M of uncommitted capex this year and nearly EUR1.5B available in the period through 2020.

Meanwhile Inmarsat is hard at work designing a three satellite Inmarsat-7 Ka-band system, with in excess of 100Gbps of capacity per satellite. Although the results of the Brexit referendum may complicate its efforts, Inmarsat is hoping to secure a substantial European Commission investment later this year, which would replace the four proposed Ka-band satellites that Eutelsat had previously contemplated building using Juncker fund money.

So now it appears we face (at least) a three way fight for the global Ka-band market, with deep-pocketed rivals sensing that ViaSat may not have all the technological advantages it had expected and Hughes poised to secure at least a 6 month (and possibly as much as a 9-12 month) lead to market for Jupiter-2 compared to ViaSat-2. Victory for ViaSat is far from certain, and perhaps even doubtful, but beyond 2020 Ka-band therefore appears very likely to be the dominant source of GEO HTS capacity.

05.14.16

Back in March I noted that the Satellite 2016 industry conference “felt like 2000, as attendees peer over the edge of the precipice.” Yesterday, it seems the industry stepped off into the void, as Eutelsat’s profit warning proved to be the catalyst for a wholesale re-evaluation of the outlook for FSS/HTS data services.

Everyone is worrying about capacity pricing, where according to Eutelsat’s CEO “the outlook for data delivery is bad.” Just how bad hasn’t been obvious to many observers, not least Northern Sky Research, who in March dismissed suggestions that the sky is falling and instead claimed that so far there has only been “generally slow and stable downward pressure on pricing up to 2016″ though these drops were “expected to continue to gather steam.” Moody’s struck a similar positive note about European satellite operators in January, suggesting that “A Rebound in Revenue Growth, Stable Margins and Plateauing Capex to Support Credit Quality in 2016.”

In reality, a look at some of the largest deals shows just how much of a price decline has already taken place. Traditional wide beam transponders have been priced at $3000-$4000 per MHz per month, which made Intelsat’s offer to IS-29 anchor tenants in 2012 of about $2000 per MHz per month look like a bargain (Intelsat said it leased 20% of the capacity, i.e. about 2GHz, for $50M p.a.).

However, in February 2016, Gogo struck a deal with SES for “several GHz of both widebeam and spotbeam capacity in total” on its new SES-14 and 15 HTS satellites, followed by another agreement with Intelsat and OneWeb in early March. Gogo’s latest 10-Q has now revealed the impact of those agreements which represent commitments “to purchase transponder and teleport satellite services totaling approximately $29.5 million in 2016 (April 1 through December 31), $41.9 million in 2017, $40.4 million in 2018, $45.3 million in 2019, $58.6 million in 2020 and $309.2 million thereafter.”

Although the split between Intelsat and SES is not given, its a fairly good bet that they will be paid roughly equal amounts in 2020 and beyond. This is consistent with Intelsat renewing and extending its existing contract with more capacity being delivered at about the same revenue level (Intelsat claimed last September it had an 73% share of the aeronautical satellite communications market and Gogo had $37M of lease obligations in 2016 before these deals were struck) and also consistent with the Intelsat deal running through Dec 31, 2023 (as stated in the 8-K) and the SES deal running for “ten years from the applicable commencement of service date” for the SES-14/15 satellites (implying 7-8 years of the respective terms remaining in Jan 2021).

So if SES is leasing at least 2GHz of bandwidth to Gogo, which is the minimum amount consistent with the use of the word “several”, then the price of this capacity is no more than ~$1200 per MHz per month, and very plausibly the price may be as low as $1000 per MHz per month if Gogo is leasing say 2.5GHz. Given that the deal also represents a combination of wide beam and spot beam capacity, it certainly seems that SES’s HTS spot beam capacity is now being leased in (very!) large quantities for as little as $1000 per MHz per month, about 50% less than Intelsat’s original IS-29 deals.

That makes it pretty clear why Eutelsat has decided to step away from the HTS Ku table and limit its HTS investment “to providing broadband access to consumers and small businesses”, presumably via its European and African Ka-band satellites (and its partnership with ViaSat). Back in March I also suggested we could be in for a re-run of 2001 with “a sharp fall in satellite orders” and Eutelsat has confirmed there will now be a “downward review of our capital expenditures”.

So what comes next? Intelsat has just ordered a 9-series replacement satellite (a necessary step given that a large part of its C-band capacity reaches end of life in the next few years). But how much more Ku-band capacity is needed in the near term, given the looming threat of further price pressures from new Ka-band satellites like ViaSat-3? After all, despite large contracts with Gogo and Panasonic, there’s still a way to go just to fill up the HTS satellites that Intelsat and SES already have on order. And can Intelsat afford to match or beat SES’s price levels and still generate an adequate return on capital from the Epic satellites?

Most importantly, how much repricing is still to take place for existing Ku-band data services, and what will C-band users do if their C-band capacity becomes significantly more expensive than Ku (let alone Ka)? In addition, though Inmarsat believes (correctly) that its a very different company from Eutelsat, it has far more exposure to the data services business, and Inmarsat will now have to reconsider its pricing (and capacity provisioning) for GX services, as this low cost Ku HTS capacity impacts the aeronautical and maritime markets.

The clause in dispute is 13.5.2 which reads as follows (with certain confidential information redacted):

With respect to each of the Fleet Types, if at any time after the [***] of the Trigger Date for such Fleet Type (A) an in-flight connectivity services provider other than Aircell offers a connectivity service (B) that provides a material improvement in connectivity functionality [***] (C) such that American reasonably believes that failing to offer such service to passengers on such Fleet Type would likely cause competitive harm to American by [***], (D) such competitive system is installed and in commercial operation on [***], and (E) American has completed sourcing processes with respect to the competitive offering sufficiently rigorous such that American can validate the technology, functionality and feasibility of the competitive offering and provide objective system performance and functionality criteria to Aircell for its use in determining whether it wishes to submit a proposal as contemplated below, then American may provide written notice thereof (including such criteria) to Aircell. In such event, Aircell will have the opportunity to submit a proposal to provide such service to American, which proposal will include, without limitation, proposed terms regarding pricing, system functionality and implementation dates, within [***] after receipt of such notice, and if Aircell timely submits such proposal then American will in good faith consider such proposal. If American reasonably determines that Aircell’s proposal is at least as favorable as the competitor’s offering, this Agreement will be amended to incorporate such additional or replacement offering or functionality and the agreed upon terms. If Aircell declines or fails to submit a proposal to American within such [***], or if American reasonably determines that Aircell’s proposal is not as favorable as the competitor’s offering, then American may elect to termination this Agreement with respect to such Fleet Type. Such election must be made by providing at least [***] advance notice thereof to Gogo, and in such event this Agreement will terminate as and to the extent and otherwise in accordance with American’s termination notice. Notwithstanding anything to the contrary contained herein, American shall not be required to provide to Aircell any information that American may not disclose pursuant to confidentiality obligations to any third party.

It seems that Gogo could only have based its rejection of American’s notice on an assertion that either ViaSat’s service is not a “material improvement” (over basic ATG!) or that it is not in “commercial operation” but neither rationale appears likely to hold up in court. Moreover, the competition to equip American’s next gen 737 fleet has been going on for the last six months or more and Gogo has already offered 2Ku to American in this competition. In fact, according to Runway Girl Network, American told Gogo some time ago to stop working on the STCs needed to install 2Ku on American’s new planes.

UPDATE (2/18): According to Runway Girl Network (although not specified in Gogo’s public filings), the suit “covers approximately 200 of the carrier’s 737 aircraft known as the ‘pre-Apollo’ fleet”, which are older aircraft (delivered before 2009) “flying with ATG today and no in-seat IFE screens.” A key difference between these older aircraft and American’s decision to desire to use ViaSat on future deliveries, is that Clause 13.5.2 references a different “Trigger Date” for each “Fleet Type” and so it seems likely that the time period, after which a termination notice can be issued for the new aircraft deliveries, has not yet expired, and American may therefore not have the right to terminate the Agreement in respect of its new aircraft fleet at this point in time. Conversely, American certainly has the right to terminate the older aircraft even though for some of them, with limited remaining lifespan, it may not be economic to retrofit with satellite communications.

So I’m forced to conclude that in reality, Gogo is simply trying to delay American’s decision to select ViaSat for future aircraft, probably threatening litigation as it initiated (and lost) against Southwest when it purchased AirTran and switched that fleet of Gogo-equipped aircraft to Global Eagle (Delta ultimately purchased 88 of the 128 aircraft which remained on Gogo). And in response, American seems to have decided that it would go nuclear by issuing a termination notice on older aircraft, and a public lawsuit, in order to force Gogo’s hand. However, Gogo made a further filing on Tuesday Feb 17, stating that it had rescinded its prior letter which had questioned American’s termination notice (on the grounds of “system performance and functionality of the competitive technology”), and claimed that as a result American’s suit was now “moot,” presumably in an effort to limit the public airing of the two companies’ disagreements.

After all, if American did not exercise its rights under Clause 13.5.2 of the agreement, it appears that it would have to use Clause 13.5.1, which contemplates a payment to Gogo apparently equal to at least a year’s revenue per plane:

American will have the right to terminate this Agreement at any time on or after the [***] of the Trigger Date for the last retrofitted Fleet Type, by giving [***] written notice and paying Aircell an amount equal to the amount obtained by multiplying (A) [***] by (B) Aircell’s [***] from Connectivity Revenues earned by Aircell in the year ending on the applicable anniversary of the Trigger Date.

Gogo has declared that it now plans “to submit a competing proposal to install our latest satellite technology – 2Ku – on this fleet”. However, given that American has already considered 2Ku with regard to “system functionality and implementation dates” for its newer aircraft, Gogo’s only option to improve its offer would be to reduce the pricing significantly. As I’ve noted in conference presentations, ViaSat is providing significantly better service, to 4-5 times more passengers, with a revenue per boarded passenger of around $0.50, compared to the $0.80 that Gogo currently generates from its ATG network. In other words, ViaSat’s revenue per Mbyte is something like a factor of 10 lower than Gogo generates at present (and remember Gogo has told investors that the cost of capacity for 2Ku is similar to ATG-4, albeit with future reductions expected as Ku HTS satellite capacity becomes cheaper).

It therefore seems that Gogo will lose either way: it either loses American’s old and/or new aircraft, setting the scene for a complete termination of the existing contract if ViaSat proves to offer a significantly superior service, or it wins the deal by offering dramatically lower pricing, which will reduce its revenue per boarded passenger and increase its capacity costs on these new aircraft, and would presumably provide a benchmark for a renegotiation of the deal covering the rest of the American fleet. That would be a far different trajectory from the increases to as much as $4-$5 per boarded passenger that Gogo set out as its long term objective in previous analyst days.

However, it remains to be seen how and whether American will ultimately be able to proceed with its original plan to install ViaSat on new aircraft deliveries, or whether we are set for a long and ugly stalemate between American and Gogo over how these aircraft will be equipped.

We published our new Inmarsat profile in December which highlights the company’s prospects for strong revenue growth from GX over the next few years, although since then Inmarsat has faced a few setbacks, with the Intelsat appeal of Inmarsat’s US Navy contract win being sustained and Apax finally emerging as the purchaser of Airbus’s Vizada division, despite Inmarsat telling people before Christmas it expected to buy this business in early 2016.

However, there is the potential for an even more worrying development in the near future, with ViaSat expected to give more details of its ViaSat-3 project in early February. This seems to represent something of an acceleration in ViaSat’s plans since last November, and it now looks possible that this announcement could include deals with some large new airline customers to provide advanced passenger connectivity services.

If it can be realized, ViaSat’s proposed 1Tbps capacity for ViaSat-3 would have a dramatic impact on bandwidth expectations and more importantly the low cost of capacity would make it feasible to offer low cost or free Internet connectivity, including streaming video, to airline passengers, even as data consumption continues to grow rapidly in the future. ViaSat could potentially do deals with Southwest and/or American, the first of these sounding the long awaited death knell for GEE/Row44′s connectivity business and the second proving disastrous for Gogo, which currently gets about 40% of its passenger connectivity revenues from American Airlines (though any fleetwide migration to ViaSat wouldn’t happen until after the current 10 year contract expires in 2018, just as seems likely for Virgin America).

That really would represent an explosion in the inflight connectivity market, though not one which would be welcomed by other satellite operators and service providers, many of whom have a difficult relationship with ViaSat. Indeed its notable how ViaSat is now also throwing its one-time partner Thales LiveTV under the bus, claiming that they mounted “a campaign of whispers…alleging that Exede did not meet its advertised performance.”

The implications of deals that could ultimately bring ViaSat’s number of served aircraft in North America up to as many as 2000 planes (i.e. half the equipped fleet) would be wide ranging, not least for inflight connectivity service providers, who’ve become used to seeing Gogo and Panasonic as the market leaders, and passengers, who’ve become accustomed to a market where “Inflight Wi-Fi Is Expensive, and No One Uses It.”

Even amongst satellite operators there could be some upheaval, with Inmarsat having just ordered $600M of I6 satellites (actually $900M+ including launch, insurance and ground segment costs) carrying what looks, in comparison, like a puny ~30Gbps per satellite, SES having signed a ten year $290M bandwidth contract with GEE in November 2014, and Intelsat potentially set to lose some of its claimed “73% share of today’s aeronautical satellite communications market.” Most importantly, if passenger expectations of free or low cost inflight WiFi start to spread beyond North America, then Inmarsat’s estimate that its European Air-To-Ground network will generate $300K per plane per year (more than double Gogo’s current run rate) would look even more questionable.

Widespread angst about the effects of new HTS satellites and slowing revenue growth is already weighing on the outlook for the satellite industry, but if ViaSat really does have one or more big deals to announce next month, then it would take concerns over future capacity and pricing trends to a whole new level. In that case we’d better all buckle in and get prepared for a very bumpy ride.

09.01.15

Often I wonder whether some companies understand how the FCC works and what they really shouldn’t say in an FCC filing. Gogo has just provided a classic example in its August 26 ex parte filing that tries to counter SpaceX’s recent intervention in the 14GHz ATG proceeding, where Gogo has been trying to get 500MHz of spectrum auctioned for next generation ATG networks.

Unfortunately for Gogo, it has been left as virtually the sole active proponent of this auction, after Qualcomm laid off the team that developed the original proposal and stopped participating in the proceeding. While I’m sure Panasonic and Inmarsat would take part if an auction was held, undoubtedly they are relishing the prospect of Gogo struggling to improve its “infuriatingly expensive, slow internet” service with 2Ku capacity that Gogo itself admits is roughly the same cost per Mbyte as its existing ATG-4 network (at least until it can renegotiate its current bandwidth contracts).

So when Gogo makes submissions that directly contradict those it previously put into the record, it shouldn’t be surprised if the FCC regards these rather skeptically. In particular, in July 2014 Gogo told the FCC that it “supports the proposed §21.1120 requirement that interference from all air-ground mobile broadband aircraft and base stations not exceed a 1% rise over thermal” whereas now “Gogo concurs with Qualcomm in that a 6% RoT has a negligible impact on the cost and performance of an NGSO system while creating an additional and disproportionate level of complexity or loss of performance for the AG system” and “Gogo supports the 6% RoT aggregate interference levels initially proposed by Qualcomm”. So suddenly Gogo thinks that its a perfectly acceptable to have six times more interference than a year ago.

Even more of a hostage to fortune was Gogo’s September 2013 comment about the unacceptable problems that an ATG network (referred to as Air to Ground Mobile Broadband Service or AGMBS) would cause for NGSO systems like that proposed by SpaceX:

“In its initial comments, Gogo expressed its concern that Qualcomm’s assumptions regarding the operating parameters of the hypothetical NGSO satellite systems were not representative of typical or worst case system configurations, and that the interference between a future system and AGMBS systems could be far greater than indicated by Qualcomm’s estimates. Gogo is not alone in this view, as the Satellite Industry Association (“SIA”), ViaSat, EchoStar and Hughes all raised similar concerns in their comments. SIA included an analysis within the Technical Appendix attached to its comments which illustrates the potential for much greater interference than had previously been calculated by Qualcomm. In Gogo’s view, some aspects of the analysis are subject to challenge because it overstates the level of interference that may be expected. Nevertheless, the overall conclusion remains valid – an AGMBS system operating consistent with the proposed rules would cause unacceptable levels of interference to many, if not most, possible future Ku-band NGSO system configurations. The analysis of EchoStar and Hughes, provided in Annex B of their comments, provides additional support for this conclusion. Similarly, ViaSat’s comments indicated that the NGSO analysis presented by Qualcomm is not representative of the range of potential Ku-band NGSO systems which have been previously proposed.”

Yet now Gogo, having previously claimed that Qualcomm’s calculations were flawed, suddenly decides that after “incorporating [SpaceX's] stated parameters into the Qualcomm interference calculation methodology” everything is fine and “the resultant RoT from an AG system into the SpaceX NGSO system is far less than [its newly relaxed] 6%” interference criteria.

I can only conclude that Gogo must be truly desperate to get the 14GHz ATG proceeding completed, because it needs the capacity ASAP. However, making contradictory filings is certainly not going to help the company to get a favorable ruling from the FCC anytime soon (especially when politics is lurking in the background, in the form of the Association of Flight Attendants expressing concern about the FCC taking action on this matter).